buddhist dogs
or are they dawgs
We were going around the roundabout. I wouldn’t call it ripping through, but definitely rolling. It was right after we were going through the 32 degree sunrise. All blue and all pink. All trans, if you will. Isn’t it funny that pink and blue were the colors assigned to the ends of the gender binary, and all they make me think about is queerness? I took a nine second video of the colors and only realized afterwords how funny it was that Coldplay was on in the background.
And on the other side of the roundabout there were two dogs. A golden retriever looking one and a husky looking one. Wagging their tails harder than I’m used to seeing dog tails wag. And my dad, in his narrator voice, said, “they’re just ready for another day.” There is just today, for a dog.
Right after that he wondered about how excited they were to take their morning shit, but in a way, that’s the same. We have this one day to be wonders, to be waggers, and to be shitters.
The roundabout and the dogs were right after we were driving up the hill from the airport in Salt Lake City. We were back to Park City. In between Salt Lake and Part City on the freeway on the side of the road there were six undercover cop cars circled around a dark green van.
By the time we drove by at the 70 MPH freeway speed and I craned my neck to the right shoulder, the person they were detaining was getting pushed into the car. My dad asked if it was ICE. It was impossible to tell driving by that fast, even with my neck craned. In the end it doesn’t matter what flavor of arrest by what flavor of cop it was; that was a person with a family and a whole life who was ripped from their vehicle, was experiencing state-sanctioned violence, and was going to have an inhumane interaction with the government and our government-funded punishment system.
This was the fourth day that I’d been reading the remembrances.
It came up in my koan study group on Saturday very casually as if it was something I definitely most certainly knew of. The Five Remembrances. As if I learned them when I was taught the days of the week. While I kept nodding along to the Zoom call, I slowly lowered my phone into my lap and searched “five remembrances buddhism” on Google. After clicking the first article, my best friend started reading them aloud on the Zoom call as though she knew I was looking, that I needed help.
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
They made me say oof.
“Oof.”
Similar to Octavia Butler’s, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change,” The Five Remembrances pull and the thread of individualism and independence American culture weaves for us our whole little lives. We are all aging. We are all of sick bodies. We are all dying. We are all changing. And we are what we do. That’s it.
The Remembrances were brought up in the context of shortening the timespan with which we invite ourselves to be present. Making our life cycle of attention smaller.
What if, like Andrea Gibson waiting for their cancer marker labs to come back in Come See Me In The Good Light, we just had three weeks and then, if we’re lucky, another three weeks. What if we woke up and knew every day that we have this body for now, and one day we won’t, and we don’t totally know what day that will be.
So we live with the body we have, with the people we love, and do the best we can to act out of love.
There are so many things that get in the way, both outside of us and of our own minds’ making. Distractions. But if I really read these Remembrances, I suck closer to the bellybutton of the moment. I notice how compelled I am to eat the earl grey cookie as soon as it comes out of the oven even if it says to let it cool (let’s face it, I eat everything right when it comes out of the oven even if it says to cool. It feels closer to its aliveness, its evolution). I suck into the opening pages of the Rachel Carson book about tidepools and the porous boundary they create between land and sea. I write “mutable” and “genesis” down in my notes app, words that make me nod. I write down some strange quotes from the young girls in the bookstore talking about Malala being a nepo baby and remind myself to look into that later. I give myself permission to not look into that later.
We are like the dogs if we want to be. Accepting our one great morning of our one great day. Or we are like the cops if we want to be. Trying to deem ourselves more knowing or more important than other people, exerting force.
I really fucking hope we are the dogs.
Make the earl grey sugar cookies. The recipe is on NYTimes. Which I know is problematic. But if you DM me or text me, I’ll send you a screenshot. They’re sweet and chewy and floral and perfect.
Have you also been looking up at the moon like she was god the whole time? For some reason in the mountains I really do feel closer. Physically. To the sun and the moon. Like they might reach out and touch me or tell me something.
I hope you have ways to feel connected to what came before you and what will come after you this week. Traditions and loops and weavings.
Hugs, always.